Lingua e traduzione inglese II

FELICITY CONDITIONS:

For Austin felicity conditions are that the context and roles of participants must be

recognized by all parites. For Searle there is a general condition for all speech acts,

that the hearer must hear and understand the language, and that the speaker must

not be pretending or play acting.

INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS:

Searle said that a speaker using a direct speech act (form and functions) wants to

communicate the literal meaning that the words express; there is a direct relationship

between the form and the function. On the other hand, Searle explained that someone

using an indirect speech act wants to communicate a different meaning from the

apparent surface meaning and the form and function are not directly related. Indirect

speech acts are part of everyday life.

7. CONVERSATION.

Conversation is talking to each other. Conversation analysis is discourse mutually

constructed and negotiated in time between speakers. There are some studies:

-Sinclair and Coulthard: studied primary school lessons and found a regular structure.

They said that the lesson can be broken down into five levels or ranks:

acts;

- moves:

- initiation (teacher), response (student), follow-up

(teacher comment and student answer.). This three movement are called

IRF; exchange:

- is the combination of moves in the IRF

structure; transaction:

- exchange then combine to make the

transaction; lesson:

- is the speech event that consist of combinations of

transactions.

-transition relevance place (TRP): a point in a conversation where a change of turn is

possible.

Conversation analysis claim that as speakers are mutually constructing and

negotiating their conversation in time, certain sequences, which are stretches of

utterance or turns, emerge. We have:

-pre-sequences: prepare the ground for sequences (pre-invitation, request,..);

-sequences: insertion sequences and macro-sequences;

-opening structures: tend to contain for example a greeting;

-closing structures: just ending with a farewell.

8. THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE.

The cooperative principle describes how effective communication in conversation is

achived in common social situations, how listeners and speakers must act

cooperatively and mutually accept one other to be understood in a particular way.

There are four maxims of the principle:

-quantity: which says that speake should be as informative as is required;

-quality: which says that speakers are expected to be sincere, to be saying something

that they believe

corresponds to reality;

-relation: which says that speakers are assumed to be saying something that is

relevant to what has been

said before;

-manner: which says that we should be brief and orderly and avoid obscutiry and

ambiguity.

FLOUTING THE MAXIMS (that there are social conventions of elements that are

respected in the conversation) when speakers appear not to follow the maxims but

expect hearers to appreciate the meaning implied. There are four flouting of:

-quantity: the speakers who flouts the maxims of quantity seems to give too little or

too much informations

-quality: may do in several ways, Can use hyperbole, or metaphor, or euphenims, or

irony, or sarcasm.

-relation: they aspect that the hearers be able to imagine what the utterance did not

say;

-manner: appearing to be obscure.

OTHER FORMS OF NON-OBSERVANCE OF MAXIMS:

-Grice: he listed two other ways to fail to fulfil a maxim: to infringe it and to opting out.

A speaker

infringing a maxim and can happen if the speaker has an imperfect command

of the language

(like a child), if their performance is impaired (nervousness, excitement) or if

he is incapable of

speaking cleary. A speaker opting out of maxim cannot reply in the way

expected.

-Sperber and Wilson: say that all maxims can be reduced to the maxim of relation.

They propose relevance theory, governed by contextual effects (adding new

information) and processing effort (the less effort it takes to recover a fact).

9. NUNAN.

-critical discourse analysis: based on Halliday’s systemic functional linguistic says that

the language is a “social act” and discourse is idealogically driven;

-spoken discourse: speaker and hearer are both present and no need to make explicit

reference to the environment. The speaker may monitor communicative event

thanks to immediate feedback from the audience. Is less structurated from a

syntactic, the utterance are

incomplete, there is limited subordination. There is a low lexical

density like prepositions, articles, pronouns, auxiliaries, modal verbs. We see

the prevalence of active constructions and there is a use of generalized

vocabulary. There are repetition

and fillers;

-written discourse: need to make explicit reference to the environment. Monitoring is

impossible. There is a prevalence of hypothetical style with use of logical connectors

(besides, however), temporal markers (when, while). The lexical density is high with

prevalence of context words, noun, verbs, adjectives, with use of NOMINALIZAZION.

We see a large use of passive constructions and there is a use of specific vocabulary.

There are avoid and no

fillers.

10. POLITENESS.

Politeness is a key concept. In pragmatic, when we talk of “politeness”, we do not refer

to the social rules of behavior but we refer to the choices that are made in language

use, the linguistic expression that give people space and show a friendly attitude to

them. There are:

-politeness and face: Brown and Levinson said that in order to enter into social

relationship we haven show

an awareness of face, the public self-image. Avoid face

threatening acts (FTAs) and

when FTAs are unavoidable, speaker can redress the threat

with negative politeness

(or negative face) or they can redress FTAs with positive

politeness (or positive face);

-off record: with a indirect speech acts the speakers utterance are expressed aloud but

not addressed to

anyone in particular, as if he/she was speaking to him/her self;

-on record-baldly: is a direct speech. If a speaker makes a suggestion, request, offer,

invitation in a open an

direct way:

negative politeness strategies:

- pay attention to negative face, by

demonstrating the distance between

interlocutors; positive politeness strategies:

- aim to save positive face, by

demonstrating solidariety and friendship;

-politeness maxims: according to Leech there are six maxims: tact, generosity,

approbation, modesty, agreement, sympathy and added by Cruse, consideration.

11. THEMATIZATION.

Is particulary important because the speaker/writer gives prominence to an element

by placing it at the beginning of the sentence. It is a stacing device.

12. TOPIC.

Different kinds of discourse tend to structure topics differently:

a) ARGUMENTATIVE+INFORMAL DISCOURSE:

-usually identify the topic early on;

-provide reasons and solution;

-the topic is thematized.

b) INSTRUCTIONAL DISCOURSE:

-topic usually given as a headline or title;

-text: sequential steps in a process, in case of a recipe, the topic is usually not

repeated in the text and it

is really thematized. The topic structure depends mainly on the connection

between adjacent

sentence, each one of which answers the question “What do I do next?” (ex.

Recipe of French

toast);

c) DESCRIPTIVE DISCOURSE (THE PURPOSE IS DESCRIBING):

-the topic is usually named early on;

-the topic structure of the text is established through the normal ordering of

elements (ex. My guitar);

d) NARRATIVE DISCOURSE (NARRATE A SEQUENCE OF FACTS OR EVENT IN

CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER):

-topic structure based on time sequences and consecutive events + possible

complications (flashback,

simultaneis, narrative);

-high incidence of time clues (adverbs, adverbial phrases, time clauses) to enable

the interpreter to

arrange events in their chronological sequence (time markers);

-time is often thematized. Topic are hardly ever thematized; topics shifts in narrative

text may be

identifies through: identification, two paragraph.

13. PURPOSE.

Firstly we have to distinguish between:

-purpose: the interpreter perceives (scopo);

-intent: the producer intents (intento).

Purpose is a key elements in the definition of GENRE. The webster’s third new

genre

internationally dictionary define such as a distinctive type of category of literary

composition. According to Swales, genre is a recognizable communicative event

characterized by a set of communicative purpose identified by the members of

professional or academic community:

-genre: classes of communicative events. They presupposed: context, participants,

communicative function

of discourse, environment and topic;

-genre membership: is based on a set of shared communicative purpose, similar

structure.

-pre-genres: there are: conversation

- (it can be communicative purposes);

narrative-letters

- (higher order category than genre).

13. JAKOBSON’S LINGUISTIC FUNTIONS AS A BASIS FOR GENRE

ANALYSIS.

There are:

-expressive: or emotive function, emphasys. The focus is on the

feeling/emotions/thoughts/options of the

send as revealed by the use of: personal pronouns, verbs expressing,

feelings opinion, the use

of emphatic speech, modals, unusual metaphors, dialect forms. Text

types typically dominated serious imaginative literature

by the expressive function are: a) (ex.

lyrical poetry); autobiographies;

b) diaries;

c) personal correspondence;

d) essays;

e) authoritative statements

f) (ex.

documents).

-conative: or vocative function, emphasis on the receiver. Relates to the receiver of

the message. Language

is used to influence the attitudes and behavior of the addressee, often by

means of: a) first or family names, title,ecc;

b) imperatives, vocatives, subjunctives;

c) tags (ex: please, don’t you);

d) language of persuasion that indicating the nature of the relationship

between the addresser

and the addressee.

Text type typically dominated by the conative function are: notices,

instruction manuals,

advertisements, propaganda.

-referential: or informational function, emphasis on the cognitive context or meaning.

The focus is on the

topic. The purpose is to convey information about external situation,

realities, events,

reported thoughts or ideas. We have:

text type:

a) typically dominated by this functions: text books, technical

report, ecc..; style:

b) modern, non regional, non dialectic: -academic papers;

-text books;

-popular.

-phatic: or international function, emphasis on the channel though which

communication occurs. Language

is use to create contract (ex. fillers, feedback).

-meatlinguistic: refers to language’s ability to speak about itself: reflexive ness

(language used to explain).

-poetic: or aesthetic function. Main purpose